Today, most people carry portable financial presentation devices such as credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards, stored value devices and smart tag devices to pay for goods and services without using cash. All of these financial presentation devices have an account number by which an individual device is uniquely identified. In the case of a credit card, the account number typically has a 16 digit card number embossed on the card. The 16 digit number consists of an initial 6 digit Bank Identification Number (BIN), followed by a 10 digit number. The BIN identifies the issuer bank such as Bank of America® and Chase® that issued the card. The remaining 10 digit number identifies a particular card issued by the issuer. Accordingly, the 16 digit number on the credit card uniquely identifies a card and therefore the cardholder.
Over the years, the card issuers have developed different card types to more effectively target a variety of customer segments to serve customer needs and increase card usage at the same time. For Visa® credit cards, for example, the product types include Visa® Traditional, Traditional Rewards, Signature and Signature Preferred just to name a few.
Each card type has a different set of enhancement features assigned to it. Enhancement features are services or goods that a card issuer provides in addition to processing purchase transactions of the cardholders. Examples of enhancement features include zero liability from loss of card, auto rental collision damage waiver, emergency cash disbursement and card replacement, lost/stolen card reporting, extra warranty period for products, travel accident insurance, lost luggage reimbursement, roadside dispatch, cash back and frequent flyer mileage.
At the low end, the Visa Traditional card is targeted to customers that are new to credit and sub-prime customers. The low end card may have a very limited set of basic or core enhancement features such as zero liability from loss of card. At the high end, Visa Signature Preferred card is offered to high net worth individuals with a high card usage. In addition to the set of basic enhancement features assigned to the low end card, the high end card may have an additional set of optional enhancement features such as airport lounge access, extras warranty period and companion airline ticket.
Conventionally, these card types have been managed by either the 6 digit BIN or the 9 digit BIN range of the card number. In other words, the type of a particular card is determined by the initial 6 digit or 9 digit number of that card. Accordingly, when a cardholder contacts a provider of an enhancement feature, the provider only needs to ask for the initial 9 digit number of the card to determine whether the enhancement feature is assigned to the cardholder.
However, as persons of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate, all holders of a specific type of card would have the same set of enhancement features regardless of whether certain cardholders desire all of the enhancement features or not. This leads to at least two problems. One problem is that it is difficult to determine which enhancement features are desirable by which customers. This leads to operating inefficiency which results in customer dissatisfaction and lost profit. Specifically, as certain holders of a particular card type may want features that are not associated with that card type, they will likely use the card less often. This results in customer dissatisfaction and lost revenue. On the other hand, some cardholders may not want certain features associated with that card type. In that case, the card issuer is paying for providing enhancement features that many cardholders are not using, which reduces the issuer's profitability.
The other problem of managing card types by the 6 digit BIN or 9 digit BIN range is that even if an issuer offers a new product type that contains a desired enhancement feature for certain cardholders, they may be very reluctant to switch to the new card because switching requires changing the number of the card. The reluctance to change is even greater today because the card number information is increasingly being stored in various Internet shopping vendors and the cardholder's online accounts that switching the card number may involve a lot of time and effort that the cardholder may not want to expend.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a system and method for more efficiently managing enhancement features for financial presentation devices to deliver the desired enhancement features to the right customers. It is also desirable to provide a system and method for determining which enhancement features are desirable by which customers in order to improve customer satisfaction and increase the usage of the financial presentation devices.